The Test Lab at Hamilton Beach, led by mechanical engineer Arthur Hudgins, Manager Engineering Test Lab and Model Shop, is a kind of punishment chamber for food service equipment and hospitality appliances. It’s a noisy place consisting of several rooms—some piping hot, some ice cold, some dry and others tropically humid—where appliances made by Hamilton Beach and its competitors are tested for performance, safety and durability.
Rooms of doom
In one room, racks of steaming-hot irons are continuously tipped and restored to their upright position while rows of toasters heat “metal bread”; in another, medical-grade scanning equipment is used to look inside appliances “in a noninvasive way,” according to Hudgins; in yet another, the parts of appliances labeled “dishwasher safe” are run through hundreds of continuous dishwashing cycles to test for stress. From the dishwasher, Hudgins pulls out a blender jar filler cap that's currently under development and points to a hairline crack on the cap. “That just won’t do,” he says, “we’ll need to correct this.”
The Blade Flex Machine
The Blade Flex Machine, a tool designed to test blade durability, can generate precisely measured mechanical stress that’s the equivalent of many cycles or years of operation, and it’s used to determine when the blade may begin to weaken. “We set the Blade Flex up to deliver blade stress very quickly so we can accurately predict the life of a blade based on that analysis,” he says. This knowledge helps the engineers at Hamilton Beach Commercial design blades that will last. In fact, the company is so confident in the quality of its product that all high-performance blender blades carry a lifetime warranty.
The Rain Machine
A modification of a machine designed for testing outdoor equipment, the Hamilton Beach Rain Machine continuously drops salt water on an appliance—while it’s running—to test the coating of circuit boards as well as the integrity of seals and gaskets. While a commercial blender on a cruise ship might be subject to excessive salt and humidity, the Rain Machine testing is intended to put an appliance through exposure more extreme than it’s likely to encounter. The goal is to produce equipment that’s much stronger and more durable than it will ever need to be.
Testing for intended use and anticipated misuse
“We want a blender that blends so well that no one will need to put a spoon in it—but what if they do, anyway? We test for that, too,” says Hudgins. To simulate the spoon mishap, “we’ll drop ball bearings or ½-inch diameter stainless steel rods into the blades while the blender is running,” he explains. What’s the worst thing he’s done to a blender? Hudgins laughs and offers this: “We’ll clamp the motor so it can’t move and then turn on the blender, we’ll flood the motor with water while it’s running, we’ll run the blender until it just stops running—and that can take a while.”
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